


good sense is the flower of old age

by chaletian



Series: Kyle Valenti: Alien Club MVP [2]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Has Issues, F/M, Friendship, M/M, Post-Finale, and there's quite a lot of trauma going on, but hey remember how Kyle brought donuts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 14:12:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18693133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaletian/pseuds/chaletian
Summary: Kyle wants to punch a wall, honest to god. Guerin has been noticeably silent so far, looking shitty and haunted over his coffee, but obviously the time he chooses to speak up is to throw himself on his sword for the Evanses.





	good sense is the flower of old age

The alien club takes a break after the first debrief session, and Kyle gives Alex a meaningful look so that Alex says, “Liz? Got a second?” and the three of them go outside.

“How you doing, Liz?” Alex asks.

Liz shakes her head. “I mean – overwhelmed? This is crazy, right? I can’t believe this is what my life has turned into.” She’s wearing one of Alex’s t-shirts, and looks a lot calmer than yesterday.

“The thing is,” says Kyle, “camping out for a week in a cave with Rosa? With Isabel and Michael driving themselves crazy? Not letting anyone else know what was going on?” He’s feeling his way through here, and isn’t particularly grateful when Alex interjects.

“That was dumb, Liz.”

“Yeah. I know,” says Liz, so OK, maybe Alex knew what he was doing. Liz rubs her forehead and sighs. “I know. It was just…”

“Overwhelming,” says Alex. He reaches out and squeezes Liz’s shoulder. “We get it. It’s just, this is a lot for everyone, and we’re probably the most able to keep our heads straight at the moment, so.”

“Right,” says Liz. She straightens up, gives them a somewhat grim smile. “No, you’re right. We’ve got to keep it together.”

“Welcome to the common sense police,” says Kyle. He holds up his hand. “High five?”

*

After all their secrets are out, it seems like the best solution to the dead-Max-in-a-pod problem is hoping that alien killer Noah wasn’t talking out of his ass when he said the aliens each had the potential to develop all the powers, and that Isabel and Michael can revive Max between them. Max hasn’t been dead as long as Rosa was, and obviously hasn’t been as – _autopsied_ – so between them it shouldn’t kill them in turn.

“OK,” says Isabel, hopping down off her stool. “Let’s go, then.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” says Kyle hurriedly, putting himself between her and the door. “Not so fast, kamikaze.”

“You guys have _been_ trying,” Liz points out. “And it hasn’t worked. We need to figure out a better plan.”

“We need to kill someone,” says Isabel. She’s pale but looks pretty determined. “I told you that’s what we need to do.”

“Madre de dios,” says Rosa, casting Isabel a look of intense dislike. Kyle wonders how much she remembers from before she died. And what effect coming back has had because – well, fuck.

Isabel flinches, but is resolute. “That’s what Noah said, and that’s how Max brought Rosa back. We can find…” She pauses. “I’m not saying we just drag someone off the street.”

“What the hell _are_ you saying?” asks Kyle, but immediately forestalls her. “No, no, this is the end of this conversation. We’re not killing anyone.” Isabel’s clearly set fair to keep arguing, but this is non-negotiable. “No, Isabel! You know what, you think Max would thank you for that? Jesus, do you know how many meals I’ve had with my mom over the last ten years, her telling me what a stand-up guy Max Evans is, how he looks out for people? You really think he’d want you to bring him back if that was the price?”

“I’m just saying, we can find a-a criminal or something,” Isabel continues doggedly.

“I’m not talking about them,” says Kyle, exasperated. “I’m talking about you, turning yourself into a murderer. You think Max would want that for you?” No, is the answer here.

“Isabel,” says Liz, with an impressive amount of compassion in her voice.

“I’ll do it.” Kyle wants to punch a wall, honest to god. Guerin has been noticeably silent so far, looking shitty and haunted over his coffee, but obviously the time he chooses to speak up is to throw himself on his sword for the Evanses.

“No,” says Alex sharply.

“Jesus fucking Christ, no-one is killing anyone,” says Kyle. “We will find another way.”

Guerin sits up straighter, and Kyle can practically see him putting on his usual attitude. “Hey, thanks for everything, but we can sort this out ourselves.”

“So, what are you planning to do?” asks Alex. “Murder a convict or two, then head out to the desert and hope you instinctively figure out how to bring Max back, despite never having done anything like that before?”

That is so clearly what Isabel and Michael are now planning, but Kyle takes a breath and moves past that because if they were really serious, they could have done that already, but they haven’t, so killing random strangers – however morally/legally compromised – is not ok with them either. (It’s a relief, to be honest.)

“I think we should take a break,” he says instead, making the effort to de-escalate with his tone and his body language because he is a professional. “We’re not going to help anyone like this.”

“Hey, I’ll head into town and get some food,” offers Liz. “Isabel, will you help?”

Isabel agrees, if a little reluctantly, and Liz removes her, because Liz is a real pal. They share a triumvirate of meaningful looks (Kyle is becoming an expert in meaningful looks), and Liz silently acknowledges her role of gently banging some sense into Isabel, because this Max thing is obviously hard on Liz, but it’s hit Isabel like a ton of bricks.

And speaking of being hit by a ton of bricks… “Hey, Rosa,” says Kyle, sidling towards the older – younger? – Ortecho. “How’re you doing?”

“How do you think I’m doing?” asks Rosa belligerently, and Kyle is reminded of exactly how much Rosa hadn’t liked him when he was Liz’s boyfriend, a thousand years ago.

“I don’t know,” he says calmly. “I can’t even begin to imagine.”

Rosa looks wrong-footed by this, and shrugs. “No lo sé, this is so weird,” she says, frowning. She’s hugging herself, and it is so fucking weird to see her; he can’t imagine what it’s like for Liz.

“So, I don’t know if Liz mentioned, but I’m a doctor now. Is it OK if I do a quick check, see how you’re doing physically,” he asks. Rosa sneers at him, so familiar it’s almost endearing.

“Dr Bigshot Valenti,” she says.

“Yeah,” Kyle replies, “my MD brings all the girls to the yard. So, how about it?”

She shrugs again. “Knock yourself out.”

Kyle produces a bag as if by magic (no, he’s kidding, he’d got it ready the night before, he’s like a boy scout), and since Alex seems to have shuffled Michael off somewhere, he sits Rosa down in the living room, and runs through the basics. He stalls for a moment at the sight of the faded scar of a Y incision on her upper chest, but that’s normal, right? Anyone would.

“Well,” he says eventually, crouched in front of her and giving her knee a quick pat, “everything looks pretty good. I’ll run a basic blood panel back at the hospital, just in case. Your blood pressure’s a little high, but – well, insofar as anything can be expected, that makes sense.”

Rosa nods, a little jerkily. “Right.” It’s strange, because Rosa was always older and more sophisticated and, to be honest, a little intimidating, regardless of – or probably because of – her reckless notoriety, but now Kyle thinks she just looks like a kid, and he feels like he can barely remember being that young. He gives her knee another squeeze, and stands up, pulling her up with him so she’s not at a disadvantage.

“Hey, it’s going to be ok,” he says. “I’m not gonna lie, this is some weird shit, but we will make work, ok? I know you don’t have much reason to trust me – or the others, I guess, except Liz – but I promise you, it’ll be ok.”

Kyle is pretty sure this is the lamest and most content-free attempt at reassurance ever, but it actually seems to work a little, and Rosa nods. She doesn’t smile or anything, but he’s pretty sure their relationship is going to take some work before that happens. This is a first step.

*

Kyle has one more stop left, and he’s a little nervous about it, truth be told. He’s learnt a lot of stuff from Alex in the last week about Michael Guerin, stuff that casts Guerin’s self-destructive behaviour of the last ten years in a different light. Kyle’s been idly writing him off as a drunken loser for a long time now, but there is evidently a lot more going on there; more than Kyle is really prepared to deal with.

Deduction leads him to Alex’s bedroom. There haven’t been any raised voices or the sound of inanimate objects being thrown around, so mostly Kyle hopes when he knocks on the door that he isn’t going to find them in each other’s pants, but he’s mostly sure that’s not something either of them is up for currently.

“Come in,” says Alex, turning around from the window he’s been standing in front of, hands tucked into his back pockets. Michael’s sitting on the bed, elbows on his knees, head down; he doesn’t look up.

“Hey,” says Kyle, giving Alex a now-patented meaningful look. Alex just stares back. Kyle finds it unsettling when Alex is all professional soldier, expression blank; it’s so different from the kid he grew up with. He puts more emphasis on his face, then jerks his head back to the doorway. Alex grimaces, but finally gets the message.

“I’ll just go and see where Liz and Isabel have got to,” he says to an unresponsive Michael. Kyle waits for him to leave, then crouches down (again, Jesus, his knees are going to be fucked by the time he’s forty).

“Hey, Michael,” he says.

“I’m fine,” croaks out Michael. He looks up now, and Kyle is not immune to the look of despair in those intense eyes and seriously, has Guerin always been this expressive, because how has everyone missed this all these years?

“Yeah?” is all he says in response, though, and Michael looks back down.

“Yeah, so you can go and do your doctor shit on someone else. I’m not the one who needs your help.” He waves a dismissive hand, and that’s interesting, because Michael’s bum hand is something Kyle _has_ noticed before now, and it is now miraculously normal, which is not something that had come up in the debrief.

“I see your hand got fixed,” he says mildly. “Mind if I have a look? Doctor shit,” he adds in explanation. Michael just shrugs, but Kyle is confident in reading that as consent, and takes Michael’s hand, looks at it front and back – no sign of the previous trauma, which had been pretty extensive – and presses it flat against his own. Michael winces at that, and Kyle can feel the slight spasm of reaction. “That still hurt?” he asks.

Michael shakes his head, and pulls his hand back, flexing it in and out of a fist. “Just stiff,” he says. “Max- Max healed it.”

“Uh-huh,” says Kyle non-committedly. It raises some questions about why, if Max hadn’t healed it at any point in the last ten years, he’d decided to do it now, but he’s not about to open that can of worms. Ditto the impact of extensive and old scarring which might not be healed in the same way as the original injury. But this is not the time.

“You get something to eat last night?” he asks instead.

Michael looks up at that, almost confused. “What?”

“Something to eat,” Kyle repeats. “When Alex took you home.”

Michael frowns. “I—” He pauses. “Yes,” he says after a moment. “Yeah, Alex made something.”

Kyle nods. “That’s good,” he says.

Michael suddenly looks wrecked all over again. “I didn’t… Alex shouldn’t…”

Kyle has already heard the sad, sad story of Alex and the junkyard and Maria, which is where he suspects this is coming from, and honestly, this is so outside his remit, but putting together the pieces from the story of Noah and Max and crazy alien lightning powers and Michael himself being brought back from the brink of death, it kinda sounds like Michael got a big old emotional high off of everything, and went out to forge some great new happy world for himself before inevitably crashing back down to earth again. Kyle can’t help but wince at the irony.

“Well, Alex is a big boy,” he says, “he’s going to make his own choices. If he wants to make you soup or whatever, that’s OK.”

Michael is shaking his head and looks like he’s about to cry, and seriously, Kyle would very much like to be able to refer him to someone a little more qualified to take on what is a lot of trauma, but as a lot of that is alien-related, that’s not really an option. Instead, he doesn’t protest when Alex comes back and sits down on the bed next to Michael, putting an arm around him. It takes about half a nanosecond for Michael to lean into Alex, exactly as he had done on the way back from Caulfield, and for Alex to have his arms around him, one hand smoothing through his hair, and Kyle judges it best to leave them to it. Alex is going to be able to help Michael far more than he can at the moment, and Kyle can be there to support that.

*

It takes a little while for Liz and Isabel to return, so Kyle goes back to hang out with Rosa. They pass the time relatively amicably, largely by going through Alex’s cupboards and bitching about how unstocked they are, before moving onto finding out what’s been going on in Gray’s Anatomy since Rosa died.

“I love that show,” says Rosa.

“Good news,” says Kyle, “binge-watching is the future.”

“The future.” Rosa shakes her head. “I can’t believe little Liz is an adult now, you know?”

“She turned out pretty great,” offers Kyle.

“And my dad – he’s all ok, right?”

“He’s fine,” says Kyle. He bumps her with his elbow. “They’re both great, Rosa. They’ve missed you.”

“Yeah.” She took a breath. “Aliens, huh? Qué mierda?”

“Tell me the fuck about it,” says Kyle. “Roswell is the worst.”

**Author's Note:**

> Lol I wrote and posted this whole thing, and have only just now remembered that Kyle and Rosa are half-siblings! This show has way too much going on!!


End file.
